Pearly Drops and illumitati Deserve a Vacation

Sandra Tervonen and Juuso Malin are the Helsinki duo Pearly Drops; Tatiana Bruening, aka illumitati, is a photographer and artist based in LA, who also performs music as Contact Sports. Tatiana is featured on the new Pearly Drops record, The Voices Are Coming Back — out now via Music Website — so to celebrate its release, the three got on a call to catch up. 
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music 

Juuso Malin: How are you?

Tatiana Bruening: I’m doing well. I’m just here in LA. Happy to see the sun. It was, as you guys know, the rainiest Berlin summer ever, so I feel like I’m finally getting the summertime. I know you guys have been traveling around a lot, so are you happy to be back? I want to hear about your travels!

Sandra Tervonen: Yeah, after we left you in Berlin, we went to London for a week to do sessions.

Juuso: Yeah, with some local artists. And now we have quite a lot to do, because we need to go through all those sessions and try to make them work.

Tatiana: Yeah, I was thinking about that — if you guys are doing a session every single day, it must be so hard to keep track of what you need to mix and produce and rerecord and all that. It must be a lot of content you’re sitting on after all of these sessions.

Sandra: Yeah, it is. [Laughs.]

Juuso: How do you feel about being back in Los Angeles? Some people might not know that you have a dual citizenship. You’re German as well.

Tatiana: Yeah. Being back in LA — actually, there’s a really funny saying that there’s two of the best feelings in the world: One is getting to leave LA and go somewhere else, and the other is coming back to LA. [Laughs.] I actually just went up to Sequoia, the national park, and spent a couple of days alone in a cabin, which was really incredible. It was kind of a reset. After being on tour for such a long time, it was nice to be alone, finally, with myself and my thoughts.

Sandra: It sounds wonderful.

Juuso: Yeah, we would definitely like to do something like that.

Tatiana: Yeah, I think you guys deserve a vacation. I don’t think people realize how hard you guys work and how many projects you’re constantly juggling. And the speed at which you work is also insane.

Sandra: Thank you.

Juuso: Yeah, even though we are Pearly Drops, tomorrow we have a show here in Finland — we’re live members for another group. We’re both playing synthesizers on stage, and we’re actually playing four nights in a row at the same venue. It’s gonna be a busy four days.

Tatiana: Sandra, you’re full time in school at the moment as well. Has that been hard to balance with also doing all this travel, or have you been doing it remotely?

Sandra: Well, for the summer, the school has been mostly off. But this week has been kind of a lot, actually. The school that I’m in, it’s the kind of university where you have to be present. You can’t just study remotely.

Tatiana: Is it really hands on and technical?

Sandra: Yeah, yeah.

Tatiana: Is there anything that you’ve learned that you’ve brought over into the Pearly Drops project already, or a line of thinking which you’ve found to be really beneficial towards the project?

Sandra: Yeah, I think so…

Juuso: From my perspective, for example, because we are releasing a new album, as part of the rollout we have done these sort of parasocial phone calls. We have this number where people can call.

Sandra: I’ve been making the sound design for the phone.

Juuso: Yes, if you call that number, you will hear this message that has been made by you. I can definitely hear the sound design learnings…

Tatiana: Do you think that it’s given you a new attention to detail?

Sandra: Yeah, I think so. It’s a film school, and we’re focusing a lot on narratives, how to create a story. And I feel like that has influenced me a lot. I have been thinking more about the stories in our songs or in our album.

Tatiana: I mean, your songwriting is already so strong, but especially this new album — when I had a chance to listen to it all the way through, I could really feel a wonderful progression, and I think that there was a lot of really strong storytelling on this. Something I do notice a lot in your guys’ work, and especially having the chance to be in the studio with you, is this really strong attention to detail where you put a lot of intent into sound selection. I’m not technically trained in music at all, so it’s a little difficult for me to try and use the right terminology, but it’s like you’re able to really focus on the ingredients of what you’re making, and making sure that those are all organic and the best ingredients possible, rather than trying to put a bunch of sauce on something and make it work. You know what I mean? That’s something I really find wonderful about you guys, your attention to detail.

Juuso: Thank you so much.

Sandra: Yeah. I guess my fear is that we might get stuck on some technical stuff for a while, and that it might take too long and other people will get bored. 

Tatiana: No, I appreciate the pace at which you guys work. Because I think that sometimes in sessions — and maybe you guys have experienced this yourselves — I’ve worked with producers where there’s not a lot of intent happening, and it’s just kind of this workflow and you can’t actually sit down and think about the story that you’re trying to tell or the vibe you’re trying to curate. It’s like you already have half of the track filled before you’re able to pause and really think about where you were trying to go in the first place. So I think that having every decision be sat upon and thought about and really intentional is very important.

Sandra: Thank you.

Tatiana: This is just me glazing you guys for 40 minutes straight. [Laughs.] 

Sandra: [Laughs.] 

Juuso: Well, we appreciate you as well. People might not know that we have been working together on music. But maybe before we go into that, should we talk about your beginnings or where you come from — because we found you through photography.

Tatiana: Yeah, I’ll give some context to how this relationship came to be and how we started working together. I honestly had a really tough moment in my career where I wanted to quit making content for the internet, and I decided to stop making content for other people — because my main source of income was doing photography for brands and influencers and celebrity clients here in LA. I just got really frustrated and burned out and wanted to move into working a “normal person job,” as we say. [Laughs.] I decided, Well, if I’m gonna quit, I’m gonna at least go out with a bang. So I decided to make this really surrealist kind of avant garde video art project, and lo and behold, the weirdest, most strange stuff that I was putting out wound up introducing me to a whole new network of people that I always wanted to work with. It was this weird affirmation that I shouldn’t quit. 

At the same time, I was also teaching myself Ableton, because it was a lifelong goal of mine to make just one song. I was like, I just want to make one song, at least at one point in my life. And I actually wound up using it in some of my video art pieces, and then, of course, that’s what starts to take off, this music in these video art projects. And through the wonderful people that I’ve gotten to meet on the side of this more artful stuff that I’ve been creating, I got to meet you guys. I think it was over DM first — maybe I slid in your guys’ DMs because I was a fan of your music. I think we were loosely in communication about making some visuals together, and then I found out that you guys live in Finland, and I was like, Hmm, maybe this would be a little difficult to organize… But let’s definitely stay in touch in case I’m in the EU. Then, at the same time, I was working through some emails from label offers, and one of the A&Rs over at Pack Records was like, “Hey, you should really work with this group called Pearly Drops and make music with them.” I was like, “That’s so funny. I don’t think that they would ever want to do that, they’re so cool and out of my league, but I was gonna make visual works for them.” But I was like, “Let’s shoot our shot and see what they would say about it.” And then we started making some stuff together, and here we are.

Juuso: Yeah. It’s really mind blowing how things can work out sometimes. You have a quite large following on Instagram, where we started to chat a bit, and it’s interesting that you saw our messages, because I would assume that you get a lot of messages daily.

Tatiana: But I look at every single one. And I actually respond to a lot of messages — I love talking to strangers on the internet.

Sandra: Yeah, we do too, actually.

Tatiana: Is there anything crazy you’ve heard on the phone line that you guys have opened to fans?

Juuso: I mean… I don’t want to talk bad about anyone, but… There’s definitely some crazy things at times.

Tatiana: Has anybody ever left you hate mail via this phone line?

Juuso: Yeah, definitely. Usually after our shows.

Tatiana: Oh, my gosh. [Laughs.] I can’t imagine — you guys are so wholesome and and so positive. I don’t understand what somebody could even say. 

Sandra: I guess they are usually triggered by the fact that we don’t really play any live instruments in our shows.

Juuso: Yeah, at the moment it’s more like a performance where we just sing and we don’t play any traditional instruments.

Tatiana: [Scoffs.] They’re purists. Whatever!

Juuso: You have never received any hate mail from your shows?

Tatiana: No. Actually, I received a love letter in Berlin — a handwritten love letter. That was wild. I’ve had people confess their love to me after shows a couple of times now, which has been shocking. But, I mean, you can scroll through my DMs — it’s definitely not like that on the internet. I’ve never had anybody be an upfront hater to me in real life, but definitely my DMs are a cruel place at times. I’ve definitely had my fair share, in my five or six years of being a public figure…

Juuso: If the readers don’t know our backstory, maybe I could mention that me and Sandra met already over 10 years ago, and we started to make music together. We’ve been trying so hard, touring a lot in various different groups, trying to find success. And then when we finally decided that we were going to maybe quit music altogether, we had this last opportunity to try something, and we started Pearly Drops. And then when we had ditched all hope, it actually became something.

Sandra: It’s kind of similar to what you said.

Tatiana: It’s always right when you’re about to quit. It’s funny — your biggest crash out can lead to your greatest lock in. [Laughs.] But, I mean, especially me as an audience member, or somebody that was a consumer of your music, I wasn’t actually sure the context of your relationship and how you came to meet. I thought that Pearly Drops was the main project that you guys had been working on for some amount of time.

Sandra: Well, we had this project together — it was just us two, a similar situation.

Juuso: But under a different name.

Sandra: It was actually your solo project initially, that you started already in 2008.

Juuso: Yeah, quite a long time ago.

Sandra: Yeah. And I joined at one point.

Juuso: In, like, 2013. And that project had successes here and there, but never anything lasting. It had these moments where we had shows overseas — or maybe not overseas, but in Europe.

Sandra: Over the Baltic Sea. [Laughs.] 

Juuso: [Laughs.] But, yeah, and then we have also been part of different bands as live touring members.

Sandra: Yeah. And we’ve been basically a producer duo for other artists for many years. Actually, almost 10 years.

Juuso: Since when we met. So, Pearly Drops was the last sort of hope that we had.

Tatiana: And if it didn’t work out with Pearly Drops, what do you think that you would have gotten into?

Sandra: Maybe I would be doing more of the film sound design stuff. Although I am studying it now, I don’t actually have time to do it that much.

Juuso: I’m sort of scared to even think where I would be without Pearly Drops.

Tatiana: [Laughs.] There was no plan B.